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9 Weeks to Pump Out New Orleans?
Cr0w T. Trollbot asks: "It looks like New Orleans is going through something very close to the worst case scenario right now. This somewhat prescient study, written well before the hurricane, describes some of the challenges (engineering and otherwise) facing New Orleans. 'In this hypothetical storm scenario, it is estimated that it would take nine weeks to pump the water out of the city, and only then could assessments begin to determine what buildings were habitable or salvageable. Sewer, water, and the extensive forced drainage pumping systems would be damaged. National authorities would be scrambling to build tent cities to house the hundreds of thousands of refugees unable to return to their homes and without other relocation options.' The hypothetical is looking awful close to reality right now. What can be done about draining and rebuilding New Orleans in light of the massive flooding, and what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?"
A) Don't live by a freaking ocean. Oceans have hurricanes.
B) Don't live in a city that is 8 feet below sea level. Flooding WILL occur.
Problem solved.
are we requesting it?
You are all a bunch of idots.
Only way to really prevent something like this is to not build densely in high-risk areas in the first place.
Of course, the very features that makes for high risk - river deltas, earthquake areas, active volcanism - tend to produce really desireable areas to live in.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." -- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
Does it bother anyone else that our tax dollars will be used to pay for people who didn't have insurance?
At the very least, stop taxing everyone else to subsidize flood insurance for people who insist on building in flood-prone areas.
If they want insurance, let them pay the real cost of it. If they don't, let them take the risk themselves.
Of course, we'd probably have to transition such a system into place by instead of banning existing structures from getting the current subsidized insurance, simply telling everyone who got flooded out that if they insist on rebuilding in their flood-susceptible location, they're going to have to do it without flood insurance. Otherwise, they can turn their property over for parkland and take it's pre-flood value to go rebuild somewhere else.
I know that a lot of not as wealthy people also live in flood-prone areas, but can't the taxpayers stop paying for rebuilding millionaires beach and river-front property over and over again in the same locations?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Another thought I had is rebuilding the new buildings so that the first floors are parking only, designed specifically to take flooding without major damage. Also, no more building houses below see level, put them somewhere else. Some of this will undoubtedly be self-correcting, as the insurance companies are probably going to up their premiums significantly for anyone who insists on rebuilding in the area.
How about keeping the national guard at home so that we have a trained and able bodied army of people available to actually do the work? Right now I've heard that there's anywhere from 3K-6K Louisiana national guard troops following the story from Iraq.
Give thanks again to the GWB administration's inability to govern.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You forgot the Mississippi river on the 4th side. That is often at a higher level than any of the other three (always higher than the sea, which not a direct neighbor yet -- needs a few more storms for that).
As for insurance, the US gov has bailed out every insurance company that hit bad times insuring Florida or Texas or California property, so why not ? It's a win-win situation -- nothing happens, you get the premiums, something happens, the Gov pays for you.
I predict people will move right back in, rebuild with easy gov-backed credit, and repeat all these mistakes again while our national deficit balloons.
Maybe they should seriously consider moving the whole city to someplace more stable (not below sea-level and not sinking).
Yeah, that'll be very expensive, but if they don't do seriously consider the moving option now, they'll probably have to consider it some time in the next 50 years anyway. Given the location and parameters (below sea-level and below Mississippi level much of the time) it's amazing that NL has lasted this long. Perhaps we should consider NL to be the first victim of Global Warming (which produces stronger hurricanes and higher ocean levels).
Gee no practical value. I guess the whole port thing is useless now that we no longer use ships. Oh and the oil and gas terminal is also useless now that we have Zero Point Modules at every WalMat
There are some real practical reasons for New Orleans to exist.
There are some things that can be done to reduce the impact of hurricanes like this. The biggest one is to restore the delta and the wet lands. The messing with the Mississippi caused a lot of this damage.
Building codes can also make a big difference. My home got hit by TWO hurricanes last year. I had no damage. Lots of older homes near me get a lot of damage.
BTW if we are going to condemn cities that are could be damaged by natural disasters lets start the list with most of California and let's face it New York is just a giant target for terrorists. How many Billions did 9/11 cost the US? Oh and Seattle is next to a chain of volcanoes.
Cities tend to be where they are for a reason. Lots of cities tend to be on rivers and the Ocean because water transportation is so useful. New Orleans would have done just fine with a CAT 2 or CAT 3 Getting hit by a CAT 4+ is a very rare event for anyone location.
Saying that these people should "just" move on is uncaring, mean, and stupid
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
are just going to leave the city for good? Seriously, if it takes 2 months to get things back to something that even remotely resembles "normal" what are people going to do in the intervening time? Esp. considering that most children were looking to go back to school soon. My bet is that there will be a significant "brain drain" out of the city/state. Young educated people are going to find a job somewhere else and not look back. I wonder if that will be taken into account when the final tolls are reached....
Monstar L
Scientists will tell you that the leevees caused the problem in the first place. The Mississippi is supposed to flood naturally which builds up the marshes that protect the city from the ocean. Settlers have been building leevees to stop the flooding for hundreds of years, this is just what happens when you do that. It's the cost of doing business when you mess with nature.
Well, considering how slow the Bush Administration (which is totally corrupt and incompetent in case you're not outraged by now) was to respond to December's tsunami disaster, NO country will be rushing forward anytime soon to help desparate Americans.
...considering that it would cost billions of tax dollars. ...and New Orleans is a "blue" city in a "blue" state. ...But watch how quickly they help Trent Lott and his friends rebuild their devastated Mississippi gated community.
And the Bush government will likely not also
Congress cut the fiscal year 2006 budget to the US Army Corps of Engineers in the New Orleans district by $71 Million, the largest single year cut ever.
Ironically, a study to determine the effects of a Cat 5 hurricane was also shelved.
Moreover, the New Orleans district imposed a hiring freeze back in June, the first time in 10 years.
Congress may be partially to blame for the failed pumps and the long clean-up time.
Think about the fact that a major U.S. city that many people love is slowly being destroyed almost completely. Think about how when all is said and done probably thousands of people will be dead from this. Think about how a husband feels knowing his wife is dead, or a wife feels seeing her husband die, or a parent who sees a child sicken and die.
Think I'm being overly dramatic? Think again. This is going to wind up being the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, and what I'm seeing on /. are jokes? I know the usual flippant response is 'hey dude, this is a valid response to tragedy.' Yeah, I understand that, but man, people are actively dying right now. How about just a tad more respect at this very moment, and then make your jokes? Why not wait to see the full impact of this disaster before you reflexively respond with sarcasm and wit? Please.
These storms are part of a natural Hurricane cycle. These cycles have been seen going back centuries. Not really a case of Karma. If so wouldn't it have been more far for a massive hurricane to have hit California and New York where lots if this oil and gas is burned?
These poor people need help just a bunch of morons judging them and making stupid comments.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I was just wondering, what exactly COULD have been done? Have everybody face southeast and blow really hard to make the hurricane move further east?
The only thing that you can do when there's a hurricane coming is GET THE FUCK OUT. A mandatory evacuation was announced at least 36 hours beforehand. Anyone with half a brain had ample opportunity to GET THE FUCK OUT.
Knowing that there are plenty of people with less than half a brain, they opened up the Superdome so when those dipshits finally realized, too late, that the governor really meant it when he said GET THE FUCK OUT, they'd have something to cower in besides their single-story wooden houses left over from the Great Depression and earlier.
3/4 of a million MRE's, millions of gallons of bottled water, etc. etc. were all staged at nearby locations (as close as they could get without being just as fucked as the idiots who stayed in the city).
So, my question to you is this: What else was the government supposed to do to save the stragglers from their own stupidity?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Ummm, yeah, I wonder if Chavez is really interested in helping the US, or if he is more interested in turning poor people into communists? I know this sounds like some crazy idea, but the last paragraph of the article is interesting:
"Last week, Chavez offered discount gasoline to poor Americans suffering from high oil prices and on Sunday offered free eye surgery for Americans without access to health care."
Call me skeptical.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Where from? Pumps on the scale we're talking about aren't exactly lying around, they're manufactured to order. Then there's the problem of power, given the extensive damage. Then we can start talking about working conditions for installing those pumps...
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
The free eye surgery, however motivated, was a humanitarian act. It is truely terrifying how people in one of the richest countries in the world go without basic healthcare.
Me (Blog)
I once tried to figure out the safest place to live in the USA. I eliminated all places that have:
Tornados
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
Wildfires
Fierce Blizzards
Sweltering summers (100+ F, 40+ C)
Volcanos
Nor-Easters
Flooding
Ignored tsunamis as they are unpredictable
Had nothing left of the USA after that. Every area of the country has one probkem or another.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
You must be one of those foreigners who thinks that all Americans are rich.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Get real. There is a differnece between donating your money to those in need and having your money taken from you. If I stick a gun in your face, take your wallet, but give 25% of it to a charity, I'm I not guilty of theft? That's the point the of the original post. I have no problem giving to charitys that will help the people of New Orleans get back on their feet. What I, and many others, have a problem with is that money is taken from us without our permission by the goverment and given to these people when their is a 100% chance that a similar event will happen in the future because of the location these people choose to live in and do business in. Theft is theft, no matter how good you believe the cause to be. Let those who wish to give, give. Let those who do not, keep their money. Nobody is entitled to anyone elses hard earned property or earnings under any circumstances, period.
I realize that's hard for you to wrap your liberal head around but I don't work 8 hours a day , 5 days a week so other people can decide how to spend my hard earned dollars. I work so that I can.
Besides,
since when is Venezuela a communist country?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Some reports are saying that the govenor wants the entire city evac'ed. I am *guessing* that they may have to let the bowl fill up before they can get decent repairs on the levee. The only event I can even imagine of this scale is for the San Andreas to let loose right under LA (and I reallly hope that does not happpen in my lifetime). This is way beyond a catastrophe. This is functionally (if not literally) the destruction of a major US city. Other than the act of god bit, it would take a nuke to equal what just happened. How would you like to flee your home, then get told that it may be months before you are allowed back, and then to see what all that water did to the carpets, drywall, etc.
Folks, it doesn't get much worse than this.. except for death... and some folks bought that ticket.
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
Chavez is mainly pissed off by the way the US condoned the coup attempt in 2002. His policies inside Venezuela may be socialist but why don't you wait and see if they actually help people first before screaming communist all over the place?
Venezuela has a huge amount of poverty and he is actively doing something with state money to change that. If it works, good for him. If it doesn't then you can unfurl your anti-communist slogans and cry for war or something.
Excuse me, but why should I have to pay tax dollars to a state who put a city 17 feet below sea level? This was an inevitability, and why should the FEDERAL government have to suck it up? Sure, you could 'fill in the blank' with all sorts of pork projects, but seriously, more socialism isn't the answer here.
I already made my contributions to New Orleans. I stayed in their hotels, ate their food and patronized their stores. They should have been putting more of the tax revenue into the levee system, apparently.
Kinda like counterterrorism and intelligence funding and blaming it on Clinton eh?
They pay payroll taxes, social security, workmans comp, basically anything that gets deducted from your paycheck. They also pay to register their cars and pay taxes on them. Plus local wage taxes.
Um, sorry, if 'nothing' was done we'd be talking about the 100,000 dead today, maybe more. This is the secenaro that had been forseen for years. People were told to get the hell out of the city. Most that could did, may Idiots stayed that could leave, then there are tens of thousands of poor, elderly, and crackheads that dont have any means of doing so. The traffic was jammed for hours leaving the city, you've probably never been there, its a huge swamp with water on all sides, building more roads is extremely expensive, and the conservationist would go nuts if you tried to put a 10 lane highway in.
If the people didnt go to the superdome, they may be dead, there are not many places to go, I live over 250 miles away and ALL the hotels are full. Trying to bus 10,000 people in a day is a logistic nightmare. Remember they called the Superdome 'A place of last resort', that meant get out of the city now.
Now getting the people that are there out is a bigger nightmare, only one way out of the city, and if the water levels rise, it too may be cut off. If you live close and have a flat bottom boat, they may need your help over there.
Most of the dead so far have been in MS, not LA.
Your post is emotional drivel, you cant even grasp the scope of this disaster. Thousands of square miles of land has been severly affected by this storm, even with 100,000 emergency workers its going to take days to find survivors, and weeks for even the most basic clean up to get underway.
We live at the mercy of nature, when we think that we have it beaten, it shows it true power and our foolishness.
You know what? I completely agree. Jokes about it may be in poor taste, but hey its the internet and people(immature teens mostly) do sometimes joke to cope.
What gets my fucking goat is all the assholes who are saying "oh well, what did you fucking expect based on where you live? Fuck em". They aren't joking, they aren't using "coping mechanisms". They are just cold-hearted fucktards who could give a crap about anything in life that doesn't directly affect them. Douchebags.
Oh btw A big fuck you to the people with mod points today.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Ever seen one with 165 MPH sustained winds, gusts over 200 MPH, and a 20-ft storm surge? New Orleans has sustained many storms of the intensity of a North Sea gale. This storm was very different.
Venzuela is a socialist country, not communist.
And if Chavez is giving away aid and helping the poor, couldn't it be that he believes in socialism and helping the poor? And through carrying out his ideology it also may influence others that the ideology has merit? His ideology of socialism/communism is that the needy should be supported by those who have the means to help them. If he practices this ideology, then people as a result of the practice will be influenced into looking at the ideology favorably.
The logical result of his type of socialism is that its a good thing and helps people, so obviously he does want people to help others in the same manner and move towards a more socialist form of government. So what?
Folks down in New Orleans have to sweat another month or two of hurricane season. Having even a Catagory I hit the city after the devastation that's already occured would, IMHO, be the worst case scenario.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The difference is that this disaster has been widely expected. When I lived in Louisiana everyone talked about this in matter of fact terms. In fact most expected things to be far worse. Just be grateful it wasn't a cat 4 or cat 5 storm that hit a bit further west. I remember talking to the guy in charge of disaster planning for the state back in the 1980's. I asked what happens if a hurricane goes over Lake Pontchartrain. He said almost everyone dies because there is no way out of the city and no time to evacuate a few million people.
This was in the 1980's.
Everyone has known this would happen eventually but pretended it wouldn't.
I understand that for the people there this is of no comfort and we have to turn our hearts to them. I agree we should. But it was like 9/11 when many people had been trying to warn the public for years and everyone turned a deaf ear. Typically these sorts of things are well known about in advance years earlier. What's tragic isn't just the people killed and displaced. What's tragic is that this could have been prevented by not building up an area in which we knew this would happen.
We should be grateful that most of the predictions didn't happen. Because it easily could have been much, much worse.
In a pure free market, we wouldn't have FEMA, we'd have entreprenuers demanding families' life savings in exchange for life preservers and clean water.
Another thought I had is rebuilding the new buildings so that the first floors are parking only, designed specifically to take flooding without major damage.
That will never happen in this day and age, given current security concerns. Two words: "car bomb."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
As difficult as it is to think about abandoning New Orleans, the grim reality is this:
1. Almost the entire city is inundated. Except for some tall and modern downtown buildings, most of the residential areas are going to be not worth salvaging,they will have to be rebuilt from scratch, even if the city is pumped dry. These buildings will be soaking the the fetid stew of stagnant polluted water for weeks, if not months. Anything made of wood will be turned to mulch.
2. Most of the major highways that serve the city are heavily damaged. It will take many months, if not years to reconnect the city properly to the rest of the world, and cost billions of dollars.
3. Same can be said for the other infrastructure, such as water, sewer, electrical, and communications infrastructure.
4. Even if the downtown high-rises are relatively unscathed (and most have pretty serious glass breakage) who will stay in the area to work in them or occupy them.
5. The levee system needs extensive repairs to hold back even another tropical storm or category one hurricane. It is not unreasonable to expect another tropical cyclone to form in the gulf and affect that part of the coast before repairs can be completed.
6. Even if the levees are reinforced against another Category 4/5 hurricane, New Orleans faces other threats to its viability as a city. Upriver, the Mississippii River is held back by huge dikes to prevent it from finding a new route to the sea. Someday, these defenses will be overwhelmed, and Old Man River will take a shortcut to the west, abandoning its current channel, cutting off New Orleans and the water flow that keeps its shipping channels clear.
To abandon New Orleans would mean abandoning over 400 years of tradition, history, and a unique and quirky culture unlike anywhere else in the country. Without a vision to keep the survivors in the region, most likely they would disperse throughout the rest of the country, as the article noted. The geography of the area provides no easy answers, there is not a whole lot of good buildable land that can be used to build a new city nearby, but there are better locations to build than the current location.
Perhaps it is the Sim City enthusiast in me, but perhaps the destruction of New Orleans would give us a chance to rebuild a city from scratch, and avoid some of the mistakes that were made in the original town. It would be a mistake as well though, to rebuild New Orleans in the same sterile and souless style as many modern suburbs are, as it would be to try to rebuild an exact replica of it upriver somewhere.
Oh fucking well. People need to move on. If the changing climate is any indication we should expect more hurricanes. What's gonna happen when NO gets a major hurricane next year? The year after? When does it fucking end and when do we keep wasting our federal taxes on rebuilding something just to be destroyed again? So the tourism is a boon to the economy? So fucking what? Maybe they need some new industry that pays the damned taxes. What would have happened if a nuclear bomb went off? The land surely wouldn't be inhabitable then and they really shouldn't view it as reinhabitable now. Earthquakes can be mitigated (for the most part), so can a great deal of other natural disasters. A hurricane is pretty all encompassing. Same thing goes for florida. There are still many, many houses there that are not recovered from last year, with no real roofing, etc. What's to happen when the next Katrina rolls through Florida? How many times do you keep rebuilding before you say enough is enough? I say make it all into a natural habitat. Let the evergreens and the gulf coastline become a huge national refuge. Christ knows that very few national parklands exist in the east and this would be a great place to start one.
All those coastal towns that were wiped out, do you think that they will all be rebuilt? What would be the fucking point? So they can all be destroyed again? It is not like the problem is going to suddenly disappear. Give up on New Orleans. It is going to cost far more money to rebuild it than it would to relocate all of those people.
zosxavius photography
I find it amazing that a sincere plea for someone else's safety was modded down.
I think that this is global warming begining to show its ugly face. On-top of that, Several key oil refineries are down right now, this could mean higher gas and heating bills down the road this year.
I think that we need sustainable energy now. So that we might curb this problems like this in the future with, renewable energies and more decentralization of energy.
Mullah Robertson's
Don't call him that. It's an insult to genuine mullahs - and you probably think I'm joking.
and once the water drains away
Where is water going to drain away to if the city is below sea level? If a dam breaks and wipes out a city, the water will eventually drain somewhere. This is not the case in New Orleans.
The people in the White House, Bush & company, backe the coup that deposed Chavez for 2 days a few years ago, despite his large majority election victory, overseen as fair by many foreign representatives, including American. After he was returned, showing his actual control of the government as recognized by its members, including the armed forces, he was reelected, by an even larger margin. Chavez is the popularly elected leader of Venezeula, without a doubt. And the White House you'd have "call his bluff" has actually persecuted him, and thereby Venezuela. Not to mention the comparative differences in legitimacy of their respective elections. These are among the many reasons that Chavez' credibility is only increasing, while Bush's credibility is plummeting.
Remarks like Robertson's, who represents a sizeable fraction of Bush's base, are among the other reasons. It's hardly a persecution complex when popular American leaders demand that our government assassinate. If anyone's bluff has been called, it's America's, and now the whole world can see the Ace of Spades up our sleeve, even if it's not in the hand of the dealer sitting in the White House.
--
make install -not war
build it on land ABOVE SEA LEVEL. Who's stupid idea was to build it below sea level? If the area is really so heavily damaged, re-build elsewhere, maybe about 35 km to the north-west. Yes, it will be a massive undertaking. But hell, isn't it already?
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
My sister has lost her house in New Orleans. Her father-in-law may be dead.
/. to get some "sarcasm and wit" to help relieve the stress.
I have spent the last two days scouring news sites and LA websites and user forums for information.
I decided to read the posts on
Yes... except that instead of spending hundreds of millions building a stadium that does a mediocre job of acting as a shelter, they could build an excellent shelter for tens of millions.
Considering he is the democratically elected leader of a souvereign, peaceful and poor country i find it highly disturbing that some American politicians want him dead, only because he has a socialist policy. So much for spreading democracy. :-/
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Or at least it easier to joke about it than to think about it. Hell many people joke about bad stuff that happens to them, personally.
I have no problem simultaneously saying "good riddenance to a stinky, corrupt, crime-ridden city like New Orleans [ha, ha, big picture, funny]" and sending a nice big check to the Red Cross [individuals who really are hurting, empathy]...
What's your point? Misery is the basis of a lot of jokes.
Do Both!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
What we need to do is flood it up to sea level. Construct some levies and whatnot there to control waves and stuff, but don't try to control the level.
The parts that are underwater? Build another Venice. Correctly this time.
Make sure there's a flow through the city so you don't get nasty stagent water. And make sure that people understand the base of the city will continue to sink, so they need to either have buildings that can raise up, or buildings where they can just throw away the bottom floor every once in a while.
Build pipe systems to carry a water around, and a system of bridges to drive on. Make the pipe segments more intelligent, where if pressure drops they'll immediately turn that section off, so nasty water doesn't backtrack into the system.
Aternately, we can just require everyone to build water-proof houses, and attach boats to their roofs. When bad weather is coming we can just preemptively slowly open the levies and turn off the pumps so that they don't break.
Because, seriously. We 'protect' New Orleans as long as possible, but we can't design a 'break-proof' system. We either need a system that can't break, or a system we're willing to turn off when horrible weather hits. Either way require New Orleans delibrately being underwater some of the time.
What we must not do it build the damn city back the way it was. Yes, it will probably be cheaper right now. It won't be cheaper in the long run.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Don't use our money, taken from us by the Feds, to subsidize stupid choices. Maybe before too long, people might decide it's not worth living in a city where you're going to have severe flooding issues on a yearly basis. This also applies well to many other coastal areas.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Then I spen two summers in Ecuador. The first summer I was in the tourist section of Quito in a Spanish immersion class. I saw families -- families -- mom, dad, and kids -- living homeless on the street. On the street. The little girls would lift up their skirts, squat, and pee, right on the sidewalk. That's something you don't see very often in the US.
The next summer I spent with an indigenous family, living in thatch-roof huts, playing cards by candle-light at night. These people had absolutely nothing. Their huts were built of wood they had cut down themselves. They carried babies around in shoulder sacks made of sheets. Their children were malnourished -- a 5 year old kid looked like a 3 year old.
I'll bet you're one of those Americans who have never been in a 3rd world country, witnessing actual poverty -- people literally living in dirt. Americans are incredibly, incredibly wealthy. Even the 'poor' ones.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
> If Bill Gates' den collapses, do the residents of Redmond take up a collection?
Yes, way to go. People have lost their homes, everything they own, sometimes their lives. A good fraction of a city is underwater. I'm sure you are very proud of your position, that you don't have to help them, because, hey, they're *Rich Americans*, right?
Never mind that in pretty much every disaster of any significance anywhere in the world, they help others when they need it. Oh, I'm sure you'll be quick to point out, they might not help as much per GDP as East Bunghole, Tazmania. But the simple fact is, they do help, with both money, equipment, and food. Once in a while, they even help more than the *rest of the world combined*.
But it's just the Americans getting clobbered this time. No worries. Americans deserve whatever bad happens to them.
Maybe just look at the govt. of Cuba and Venezuela? The members of those govts. are _far_ better off than the average citizen. In fact, there are not many (if any) citizens in Cuba and Venezuela that surpass the financial level of their govts. In contrast, here in the USA, there are more private citizens financially better off than the members of the govt. Hell, you add of the top few hundred USA citizens wealth and they surpass what the legislative body of the govt. makes.
Ahh, yes, when you don't have a valid argument, curse and call names, that always works. Exactly _why_ does it cost money to run for govt. in a Socialist system? Shouldn't the Socialist govt. pay for that? Oh, yea, I am sure that _any_ citizen in Cuba or Venezuela can just run for government if they have enough votes. Umm, wait they can't. When was the last time someone ran against Castro?Damn dude, did you even graduate from high school? You don't sound like it. How exactly do you extrapolate what you based your comment above on from what I wrote: To your extremely childish conclusion? Why don't we look at the definition of Socialism over at WikiPedia So exactly _how_ do you have true Socialism if you have rich politicians making all the rules? As far as the rich helping the poor; well that happens _all_ the time here in the USA. People who are well-off help those less fortunate from free will, and not from some govt. mandated "ideal" of a classless society, which is really just nothing more than the leaders being very rich and comfortable while the rest of the people live in poverty.If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
"Cuba and Venezuela live in tons of poverty, much more than the U.S.A. Do you expect me to believe that the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela care about the average citizens health care, education and poverty?"
You obviously have no clue what you are talking about as far as Cuba and Venezuela go. Yes Cuba is poor, its a small island with limited resources and embargoed by the power that dominates its hemisphere. If you had a clue about the reality of Cuba they do in fact have great healthcare and education especially considering their absence of wealth. They train doctors largely at state expense from all over the world and those doctors go back to dirt poor regions that wouldn't have doctors at all were it not for Cuba. They provide university educations to people based on their merit, not on their ability to pay.
Venezuela is in transition from being a Fascist country like Columbia, like most countries in the Western Hemisphere because the U.S. installed Fascist dictators in most of them. They had a tiny moneyed elite controlled all the land, oil, wealth and power and the vast majority of the population was in desperate poverty and near servitude. Hard to say how Chavez will turn out but he is extremely popular among the poor and the poor vastly out number the rich. So you ranters have a problem, you have to pick one and only one:
A. Democracy in which case Chavez is going to win because he is popular with the poor and the poor outnumber the rich
B. Plutocracy and dictatorship where the rich minority control the government but its anything but democratic.
"I personally will take Capitalism and Freedom"
The irony with Capitalism is you have more freedom the more money you have. Its a great system as long as you are well off or are willing to do whatever it takes, mostly screw everyone around you, to get that way. If you've ever been poor I think you discovered there isn't a lot of freedom that counts for much. If you are affluent you get off when charged with crimes, if you are poor you rot in jail. In New Orleans the affluent we mostly free to flee destruction and the insurance companies will buy them new houses. The poor were basically imprisoned there and are bearing the brunt of the disaster, and chances are they couldn't afford insurance so what little they had is gone.
@de_machina
"If they want insurance, let them pay the real cost of it. If they don't, let them take the risk themselves."
You're assuming that people have the option of moving elsewhere.
Louisiana ain't exactly the richest state in the Union and New Orleans is among the worst of it (as the bumper sticker says, "New Orleans--third world and proud of it!"). A lot of the families living there have been living there since they were emancipated, and were the unfortunate ones that couldn't afford to move north or west during the Nineteenth or Twentieth Centuries. They don't live in houses, they live in shacks (or, in the city, "blighted housing") for which moving into a trailer would be an improvement. They sure as heck wouldn't see any money from selling their homes in an effort to move inland (even less if we follow through with your motion to eliminate subsidized flood insurance), and if they could afford to move out, they would have done so in the past hundred years or so.
And even away from New Orleans, the parts of rural Louisiana ravaged by the storm are those parts where the primary language isn't English; Cajun and Creole country. And, again, these people don't exactly have luxury houses on prime real estate. They never had any money because there's been a history of language-based discrimination longer than and almost as violent as Louisiana's history of race discrimination. And while there's been a bit of reconcilliation in recent decades, there's still a whole mess of Indians and Pakistanis that speak better English than they do.
Their job options consist of shrimping, welding, or getting shot in Iraq (ever wonder why the Deep South has such large military and National Guard enlistment rates?). They couldn't afford to move even before their shack was knocked down by a tropical cyclone. The government's options are either to help them rebuild their "houses," or allow them to wander homeless, possibly scraping together enough money for bus fare so they can wander the streets of your town, since they have little else keeping them in Louisiana.
Or I suppose we could also throw them all in jail...
Telling them to simply move somewhere else is like saying "Let them eat cake." Yes, there are fools who have second homes on Grand Isle, but Grand Isle is not indicitive of that part of the state.
Yes,
they might have asked about pumping, but the dutch could surely have told them something about interconnected systems of dykes so that one or two failures would NOT lead to complete flooding. If you have ever visited both the dutch polders and New Orleans, that would have been an obvious observation. However, those interconnected systems cost a lot of money to build and maintain.
They'd damn well better raise their premiums! Otherwise us taxpayers are footing the entire bill, and there's nothing to discourage the people from rebuilding in the same idiotic location that just got destroyed!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
- It's 8 miles (give or take) from the Causeway Bridge to Chef Menteur Highway. Hardly a walkable city. The tourists walk the French Quarter and think they've seen the city. I call bullshit.
- A great majority of the people in New Orleans has feet and the ability to use them. Even getting to La Place, 25 miles west on either I-10 or Airline Highway, is better than sitting in New Orleans. At least La Place isn't under water last I checked. At a decent walking speed of 2 miles per hour, that makes it a 12.5 hour walk.
- Those tourists tend to also have feet, rental cars, or other means of transport. For that matter, they can catch a ride with a local - most of the people I've known down there would at least give up a spot in the back of the truck or something. If I still lived down there, you can bet your ass I'd be willing to give somebody a ride if they wanted to go.
- See number 3.
- Causeway Bridge to Covington, then I-12 West. I-10 West to Baton Rouge, or catch I-55 North just outside La Place and take it to Hammond, or to Jackson, MS. Airline Highway West, also to Baton Rouge (or just to La Place or Lutcher). I-59 North to Meridian, MS or follow it all the way to I-24 in the northwest corner of GA. Highway 90 West to Hahnville, then 3127 West goes halfway to Baton Rouge. River Road as far as Memphis if you like. There's 7 escape routes right off the top of my head. Any able-bodied person on foot could have made it to La Place or Hahnville within 12 hours or so, depending on what side of the river they started out from. Both of those places have high schools which are used as shelters in hurricanes, and both are above sea level (and here's to hoping the East Saint John Wildcats kick the crap out of the Hahnville Tigers and the overprivileged Destrehan Wildcats this year, assuming they get to play. Yes, I know, that's 2 high school football teams in the same division with the same team name...go figure.)
- There are, of course, those who could not walk/bike/drive to safety, and it is for them that I reserve my pity and my disaster relief donation dollars. If the idiots had gotten out when they were told to, the emergency services currently being used to airlift Boudreaux, Scioneaux and Arceneaux (yes, those are real names) off the roofs of their houses could instead be used to evacuate the few elderly, handicapped, and infirm.
My "haughty presumption of superior intellect" is based upon the fact that about 80-90% of the people down there did leave, meaning the ones left behind are the dumbest 10-20% and those who physically couldn't leave. I'd bet my next paycheck that the former outnumber the latter 10 to 1."Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
I think New Orleans may be the first "National Sacrifice" area in the new Warmer Earth. Regardless of WHY the planet is warming, the fact is, IT IS, and places like New Orleans and Holland are going to get fucked.
So, DON'T LIVE THERE.
Especially as Energy increases in price, these kinds of disasters will become increasingly difficult to recover from. Since "New" Orleans can't be New New Orleans, maybe we can rebuilt it farther upstream and on higher ground, and call it something like "Big Easytown" or "Steaming Shithole for stupid alkies"... or something more whimsical like MardiGrasVille....
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Because they are the poorest of the poor, who could not afford to leave the city and who are now hungry and scavenging for food and drink. There are some looting of high value stuff, but 'stealing' food is perfectly acceptable actually and probably perfectly legal under these circumstances.
Oh well, what the hell...
Yeah, standing by the side of the highway, exhausted after a 12 hour walk, is a great way to face a hurricane.
It seems to be a general problem with developed land really. There's a problem seen in Ireland and the UK with broad valleys of land which become very developed: All the concrete, tarmac, and storm drains simply funnel rain down a hinterland into the rivers - where previously far more of that rain would be absorbed into the ground and only slowly make its way to either the water table or the river.
The people living downstream of the river then suffer freak flash floods.
I think we need to become far more intelligent about land use with respect to flooding. Particularly given global warming and higher amount of energy and water that will be in atmosphere.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Actually, this is not global warming showing its face. We've gone through several decades of below normal hurricane seasons (in terms of strength and quantity) and now we've had a few seasons above normal - for the gulf region. Worldwide, although ocean temperatures have risen, the overall number and strength of cyclones have not. There are plenty of other reasons for a more active hurricane season, but, at least at this point, global warming is not one of them.
There's been quite a bit of discussion on this subject in the news outlets. On the one hand, it seems like the global warming hand wringing is being done by, to put it nicely, non-scientists, while the oceanographers, geographers and meteorologists have pointed to the fairly meticulous statistics that don't show a causal link to hurricanes and global warming - yet.
Also, the whole oil refinery issue could have been avoided if not for the NIMBY problem. Don't want an oil refinery in your area? Suffer the consequences.
-h-
There's no reason a culture can't exist in a different location. You might not have the same stories to tell about who walked where and built what, but being alive and living in a relatively safe location (e.g., above sea level) is sort of important too.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"I don't think anyone would take issue with it as long as he kept up the anti-American rhetoric."
:-(
Frankly, this should concern us. How is it that someone can gain popularity by saying they hate America?
Sigh... I remember when they used to cheer for our President when he went on trips to foreign nations. Sad that was only 5 years ago now.
Slashdotters sure are a rude and discompassionate group of people.
This is required viewing for all people of prayer.
Yes, because those of us who don't pray wouldn't have the moral capacity to care. Never an opportunity lost to show off that cross on your sleeve, huh?
Why? They already know what happened! Congress, not Bush, was responsible for cutting the funding.
Ah, but why did Congress have to cut funding? To pay for the tax cuts to get reelected and for the war that Bush wanted. Remember, this is a war that Bush decided he could start without the need for Congress to declare it.
OK, what has happened is unfortunate, nasty and tragic. However, a few things spring to mind...
1. Yes, humour is how we cope. I'm English and we have plenty of London bomb jokes already. This doesn't mean I find the idea of bombs going off or people being flooded out of their homes remotely funny, it's just a coping mechamisn. If you really look at what's going on in the world, humour's the only way to stay sane.
2. Think about the people in the Superdome without air conditioning? Please. Think about the majority of people on the planet who have never had air conditioning, reliable clean water, cheap power and fuel. Given disasters like this and worse happen all the time, they are lucky to have the resources of the richest country of the world to help them. A few days or weeks of inconvenience is all they have, then the vast majority will be right back to their normal fat western lifestyle.
3. This happens in the US, and it's our (in England) top news story. WHY? Much worse disaters happen all the time in India, China, Africa, South America, and they get far less of a mention. Makes me sick. I'm not anti-American as such, but our media seem to have a bit of a fixation the general population here don't share.
Anyway to wrap up, nasty, horrible, tragic, yes. But why, given a whole ocntinent to play with, build cities below sea level next to huge rivers and oceans? Same reason to build SF and LA on the San Andreas fault, I suppose. They had days of warning, and live in weak wooden homes close to sea level in a known hurrican-prone area. They are not starving to death like many thousands did in Africa on the same day.
Remember, this is a war that Bush decided he could start without the need for Congress to declare it.
Yes, jackass, our Constitution gives the President that power. Clinton went into Somalia without Congressional declaration of war. Kennedy and Johnson sent troops to Vietnam without Congressional declaration of war.
Don't blame Congressional decisions on Bush. He didn't make them, Congress did.
That may well happen for a large number of people, just like what happened in Florida last year. There were lots of people who just said "screw it", packed their bags, and moved out. If you have a large mortgage and limited insurance coverage then declaring bankruptcy and moving away is an attractive option. I also suspect that given the number of dead bodies laying in the streets, there will also be a contingent of people who will move away just because they're unable to deal with the thought of those images.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Military police? Civil affairs? Engineers? Transportation? The whole point of the post-Vietnam Guard reorganization was to take these critical units out of active forces, so a major war would require substantial Guard activation. It worked. And so many of these critical, front-line units are deployed overseas right now, including many from the region like the 1088th ENG Bn and 199th Support Bn of Louisiana, and the 150th ENG Bn and 106th Support Bn of Mississippi. Where do you think most of the LA and MS Guard's best equipment is? In Iraq with the fighting units, or back home working to save New Orleans?
Why not wait to see the full impact of this disaster before you reflexively respond with sarcasm and wit? Please.
Mostly because the all-night bars in New Orleans were open, and had signs to the effect of: "We won't die sober!!!". The city itself is a dark, grim humour, and...yeah, something insightful here. There's plenty of time in the day for reverence. Here, we come to laugh. (c'mon, it's Slashdot. Nothing is reverent or serious.)
So by your logic a homeless american with no money is richer than a homeless 3rd world person.
Yep, because the country they live in is rich enough that they can always find something to eat in bins, if not actually find proper food at shelters set up specifically to aid the homeless.
Homelessness in the 1st world typically is due to one of severe substance abuse problems or mental illness. In the 3rd world however it's not some half-crazy or drug-addled person on the street who is there because they can't cope with society, rather it'll be entire families who are out on the street simply because of abject poverty (eg continued crop failures or utter lack of work in shanty-towns). Rather than living out of rubbish bins and shelters, these people often simply die.
You really need to get out and look around the world a bit more if you think there's no difference between being homeless in a 1st world city and a 3rd world country.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Where public safety is contracted out to the lowest bidder.
Perhaps when coastal population centers occur blow sea level, safety measures should be over-engineered?
I'd hope that Underwatertown, Florida with an average hight of 20 feet below sea-level and a population over 500,000 located on the beach with a large tourism industry, would look at the worst case scenario and then be
prepared for something twice as bad
I'd want levees that could handle 50 feet of storm surge and 220 knot sustained winds without breaking a sweat.
I'd want independantly powered (or at least secure underground lines) forced drainage.
I'd want a magical pony that would drink all the water in the case that one of the levees broke.
I'd also not put a prison in a place where the inmates would be evacuated and held on an on-ramp
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
But consider the current state of most of the former French colonies. Take a look at such winners as Vietnam, Haiti, French Guiana, etc. The parent post was meant to be funny but it's actually true - the French historically have left a disaster in their wake for centuries. (In direct contrast to British colonies - e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and of course the U.S.A.)
That was the GP point. GWB decided to start a war. That has to be paid for (otherwise you are unamerican and against "our brave boys" - bad mojo). Therefore congress has to cut the budget because of a decision they could not stop. A decision that shrub made.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt - the dangerous radioactivity doesn't actually last that long.
Little Boy and Fat Man were one time events. Hurricane season lasts from June-November every year.
Adam Smith spoke about what the world would is like, when people ignore the common weal in order to exclusively persue short-term personal gain:
"Life, in a state of nature, is nasty, brutish, and short."
It's funny how many people who identify themselves as "Capitalists", would be completely appaled at the statements he made, if they actually bothered to read Adam Smith's books.
Why is it that people insist on building, rebuilding, and rebuilding again in areas where they are almost certain to get knocked down after a sufficiently long (yet still human-scale) length of time? Let's build on this unstable clay hillside. Sure, people who've built here before have repeatedly died due to mudslides, but... Let's build in this hurricane corridor. Sure, the only reason there is space now is that the previous houses got tossed into some nearby ocean, but... Darn, our city got shaken to pieces in an earthquake. Let's invest in rebuilding everything in the exact same region. Yeah, there'll be another quake, and worse, but... Aw heck, this river system flooded again. Well, hundredth time's the charm, right? Let's build back in the floodplain. Sure, it might make sense not to do the same thing again, but... What is this, a mass response to global overpopulation? "Hey, if we keep trying to live in places like this, eventually the population may go down!" And if so, why do folks in these regions keep producing brand-new children at the same time?
as long as you keep your top on.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ptooey. What do you expect him to do--pile sandbags?
FEMA has been mobilized. Disaster spending has been authorized. What other "significant" work do you expect him to do?
He'll probably visit at some point; but, right now, do you really want the circus of a presidential visit on top of the war zone that is the gulf coast? Better to stay out of the way and let the disaster relief people do what they need to do first.
Grind your axe on something that makes sense.
It's only absurd as soon as Louisiana has direct jurisdiction over the levee system itself. It doesn't - it's a federal project. If the feds transferred ownership to the state or local officials, you'd be absolutely right. That hasn't happened, so while it would be feasible to generate funds locally and have them spent federally, it would be a nightmare of red tape, likely eating into the funds raised for the project beyond any meaningful scope.
Further, and this is a pretty meaningful point, we all were already taxed for this very project. The feds take taxes for a myriad of public works projects, and I'd expect most folks put shoring up public infrastructure higher on their list of priorities than tax cuts. Why should LA specifically tax their citizens a second time for the projects already funded by the feds? Sadly, in the guise of sensible budget cutting, the GOP has cut where they should not, spent foolishly, and left us in risky positions nationally. They decided to do things this way; let them suffer the political fallout.
RW
Funny thing about the looting. Food is one thing. I don't consider looting of food and necessities in this case to be looting. But looting anything else like electronics and jewelry, which I have seen in some reports, is like lipstick on a pig. Even if you find a way out of the city, you can't take that shit with you.
Interesting. If you're a professional thief, the kind that arranges shit months in advance, and has money in reserve to conduct a big heist...if you can find a way into the city, you could have the run of the lot. There's got to be untold wealth in bearer bonds alone that you could get to. Wow. I'm scared that I actually thought of this.
Global Warming should have something to do with it though. Take current sea level, add 30 feet, recalculate.
At that level, the coast will be dozens of miles inland of where New Orleans is now. The city will be in a hole out in the middle of the ocean with no surge protection at all. This can be expected before the end of the century.
Now is a pretty good time to take a deep breath and decide whether New Orleans needs to be saved or abandoned. If they do a half assed job of rebuilding, then they will only be doing this again every few years until they are just flat under water and nowhere to go. Even if they do it rght, New Orleans will be just a hole in the ocean with a city in it. Take this as a sign and get out while the getting is good. If they want to do a half assed job of rebuilding the walls, then do it and use the time you have left to salvage anything worth salvaging from the city.
BTW: New Orleans is not the only city within 30 feet of sea level.....
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Perhaps we should not but the wind farm in Nantucket sound but in the Gulf of Mexico.
Throwing money at it might actually be the right solution. The National Flood Insurance program has just bought most of St. Louis. The NFIP can forbid building any new structures or making major repairs to existing strucutures that are below a certain altitude. Tear down what's left and make it a national park of something. Build the new city farther inland, on higher land.
"Wonder if Congress will look into this?"
Do you think they'll look into helping you pull your head out of your ass?
To think that any amount of significant work (no matter what the cost) can be done in a handful of years to "prevent" one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory is quite simply, foolish. To believe funding to protect a city that is sinking and is at risk for three major flood types has not been a historical issue since the city was built is quite ignorant.
Looking for someone to blame is always the easy cop-out in any argument. The simple fact is that the city (along with many others) has been at risk for quite sometime.
Please explain just how some treaty, or any action whatsoever by humans, could have prevented this storm.
I can't believe people post such ignorant crap.
I agree with some of that.
... most of the strongest hurricanes on record were prior to 1960. Hurricanes in the Atlantic have been known to be on a cycle. There is a long time when there are few hurricanes and they are less severe and then the frequency increases for about 20 years while the salinity of the atlantic is up.
1. Sustainable energy resources are years away. It is going to be a slow transition from gasoline and oil. While having a sustainable energy source is all good it doesn't help the problem right now and won't help the problem for many years to come.
2. We need to improve our oil infrastructure. More refineries, another port that can dock and unload supertankers. We know this from IT -- redundancy is a good thing.
Also, this is not a global warming problem. We have had hurricanes as strong if not stronger than this one. Camille, Betsy
Supplies!
Seriously, guys, Bush-bashing really went out of style about November 3rd of last year. Not everything that goes wrong in the world is Bush's fault--especially friggin' natural disasters. Beacon of truth: New Orelans would be just as destroyed today regardless of whether there was a war in Iraq or whether Bush had or hadn't won in 2000 and again in 2004. You build a below-sea-level city on the coast of the ocean in a hurricane zone and, sooner or later, that city will be destroyed and there's nothing that any president, governor, or mayor can do to prevent that. Humans are nothing compared to the forces of nature. You might as well try to blame the Mt. St. Helens eruption back in 1980 on President Carter.
It's time some liberals get a clue-by-four and stop trying to blame everything on Bush. It was funny at first, tiring later, and now it's just bitter, childish sour-grapes that make those same liberals look like fools. When you blame natural disasters on Bush, you've really gone too far to retain anything resembling credibility.
Basically, call it Americas "chernobyl"
How about call it Americas' "Atlantis".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It's not MULTIBILLION contracts to FRAUDULENT corporations like Haliburton, not the war in Iraq, not the war in Afganisthan, not the rising price of oil, not overspending and pork-filled bills for Big Companies With Big Lobbies, nooooo, it's fucking federal disaster aid.
Ridiculous. There's A LOT more stuff you need to cut before DISASTER AID you clueless idiot.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Looking at the pictures of pretty much the entire city under water, and recognizing that most of the dwellings are made of wood, and recognizing that wood doesn't like to retain its structural integrity after days, weeks, or months underwater, I think we need to recognize that most of the structures are going to have to be demolished anyway. We're probably watching the death of a city. Amazing, really.
It goes agaisnt human nature--or at least against American nature--but I think at times like this one has to make a sensible, non-emotional decision and realize that this city should not be rebuilt. At least not at its current location.
Well...This guy says it's not global warming.
He said in a Salon article: "When we looked at the historical record, we found that the frequency of storms globally hasn't really changed at all," Emanuel said. "It's about 90 per year, plus or minus 10. The frequency globally appears to be steady."
He's also arguing that over development in these areas is the culprit of so much destruction. I.e. There is more stuff that gets damaged.
The whole article:
Aug. 30, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina has turned New Orleans into "a wilderness," said one public health official, who begged evacuated residents not to return to the city for at least a week. Rife with poisonous water moccasins and fire ants, downed trees and power lines, without fresh drinking water, power, gas or sewage, the storm has made the battered and flooded city uninhabitable.
Katrina is just the latest in a rash of powerful hurricanes that have been pummeling the Atlantic in recent years, including a record-breaking 33 between 1995 and 1999. It's made many wonder if global warming is bringing the wrath of the planet down upon all our heads. Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied historical records of hurricanes around the globe, said the answer is yes and no.
In a recent paper, "Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones Over the Past 30 Years," published in the science journal Nature, Emanuel found that as sea temperatures rise, the duration and intensity of hurricanes are going up, too.
The reason for the correlation is pretty straightforward: "Hurricanes derive their energy from the evaporation of sea water," Emanuel explained in a phone interview. "When you evaporate water from the ocean you actually transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. A similar effect happens when you come out of the shower in the morning. You feel cold because water is evaporating from your skin, and taking heat from your body. That heat energy doesn't disappear." Instead, it fuels the intensity of hurricanes.
So, as global warming increases, expect hurricanes to get stronger. However, that doesn't mean, as some perceive, that there are actually more of them lately. "When we looked at the historical record, we found that the frequency of storms globally hasn't really changed at all," Emanuel said. "It's about 90 per year, plus or minus 10. The frequency globally appears to be steady."
The recent hurricanes in the Atlantic, Emanuel explained, represent a natural fluctuation. Every 20 to 30 years, since records started being kept in the 19th century, there have been big shifts in the frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic. "For example, in the 1940s and '50s, there were very busy years, whereas the 1970s and '80s were very quiet years," he said. "And we've had a big upswing in the Atlantic beginning in about 1995. That's all natural."
The reason violent Atlantic hurricanes like Katrina may strike people as unnatural, and cause them to blame the CO2 pouring out of their neighbors' Hummers, is not because of their frequency but their destruction to people and places.
"This natural fluctuation occurs in a social environment where there is a huge shift in demographic trends, and this makes a big difference in people's perception," Emanuel said. "In the 1940s and '50s, there were lots of hurricanes in Florida, but there weren't lots of people there. So now that we're having this upswing again, it's being perceived very differently" -- for the simple fact that there is a lot more stuff to be ruined.
Meteorologists performed admirably in alerting public officials to Katrina's rising destruction, allowing them to evacuate New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities in plenty of time. But Emanuel said that other warnings by meteorologists have gone unheeded in past decades
Esta es una firma en Espanol.
On an only slightly related note, I have a problem in general with giving credit or laying blame at the feet of heads of state for economies, environmental disorders, or even great successes.
Who was president when we started the industrial revolution in the US? Maybe we should blame him for all of our current CO2 problems. What turns out to be "bad" now is only in the aftermath of what we thought was good in another case.
I'm not exactly a Bush fan, but I wouldn't blame him for the economy either. No matter what a president does or says, he cannot create even a single job in say.. the manufacturing sector. He cannot lower gasoline prices. It's not that there is some magic button he just refuses to push, it's just that people like to think that these things are in someone's control. They aren't. Why does the stock market fluctuate? Occasionally because of something someone says, or one company does, but it's a collective thing overall.
By the same token, and on the other hand, the White House, whether we like the guy in it or not, has no business taking credit for a booming economy either.
You can indeed argue with me over one point or another, and on a small time scale, the president can affect things that happen. But overall, let us remember that congress makes the laws (er including social security and environmental policy), the Federal Reserve sets the Prime Rate, and the market determines prices through supply and demand. Unfortunately, there is no single human being who can make all of these things nice and slap happy for all of us, and there never will be.Speak for yourself.
The Europeans posting here with comparisons to the Netherlands fail to understand the problem. New Orleans *is* built like the Netherlands. But a really bad North Sea storm surge (like the 1953 surge which killed 2000 people) raises sea level by 3 meters. New Orleans has had *two* storm surges *twice* that high in the last 50 years.
The people saying "it's their own damn fault for building below sea level" don't understand how cities grow over centuries. When New Orleans was founded, it *was* well above sea level -- the original settlers found it a bit risky, but acceptable. The city is sinking, and the people living in lowlying neighborhoods have always been among the poorest -- for them, it's a choice between a home which might flood, or no home at all. Tight city planning restrictions might have prevented this, but the decisions were made 50-150 years ago, in a climate of intense racism and class division. It's specious to say "it's their own fault", since those at fault aren't the same "they" as those who suffer.
People who suggest jacking up the city like Chicago are on the right track, but fail to understand the magnitude of the problem. Chicago did this in the 1850s, when its population was 30-60,000. Something like half a square mile of downtown Chicago is now raised above the river. Here, we're talking about half a million people, and 50 square miles of city. And even then, remember that Chicago's basement level totally flooded due to a tunnel rupture in 1992.
New Orleans is an engineering and planning failure, but probably not one which could have been prevented. People have no choice but to make the best of existing situations, and what seems wise at one point in a city's long history may only be proven foolish years or centuries down the road. Long-term plans also conflict with short-term needs, and short-term needs usually win.
There is no silver lining to this tragedy, except that it gives us a chance to start over, essentially completely from scratch, and do things right this time. New Orleans is now more or less a horribly blank slate: almost all the buildings in the city will need to be torn down after soaking in water for weeks. As I see it, there are three long-term ways to solve the problem of New Orleans.
1) Abandon the city. This is almost inconceivable. In addition to the massive impact on Mississippi River and Gulf Coast commerce, what do you do with the million people displaced? Even if they scatter across the country, a million poor homeless refugees will be catastrophic to the already-struggling state and national poverty programs. If they all move only to neighboring states, state governments will collapse under the load. Nevertheless, this might actually be the cheapest long-term solution.
2) Stilt houses. No, don't laugh. In Hawaii where I grew up, many coastal houses are built on 10-foot timber or concrete stilts to keep them above the height of storm surges and tidal waves. We could rebuild every single house in New Orleans as a stilt house. It would make the houses more costly to rebuild, but not by much. The next flood would still destroy roads and utilities, but the houses and their residents could be saved.
3) Jack and fill. Like Chicago, but more so. Demolish all the flooded houses. Grab every dredge, barge, and dump truck you can, and start on one end of the city, dumping Missisippi Delta mud onto the ground ten feet deep. On the other end of the city, start building houses with sturdy frames on concrete pier foundations. When the landfill reaches a rebuild neighborhood, jack up the houses ten feet, dump in ten feet of landfill, and continue on to the next neighborhood. As the city keeps sinking over the next centuries, keep jacking up houses and dumping more dirt. It's probably a $100-$200 billion project (it'd be more, but most of New Orleans' houses are very cheap), but it's a solid long-term solution for keeping New Orleans above water forever.
The one thing we can't afford to do is the one thing that will almost certainly happen. The levees will be plugged, the pumps repaired, and the city rebuilt as it stood a week ago. And forty years from now, this will happen again.
Don't want an oil refinery in your area? Suffer the consequences.
Yeah, bright, clear skies can be a real hazard. We don't need more refineries. We need more alternatives. I shouldn't have to put up with dangerous machinery in my back yard just so you* can enjoy a three hour commute every day in your* monster truck. There are many here that are telling content producers to find another way of doing business. The same goes for the rest of us. It's time to find another method of transporting our bodies from here to there. The present method is obsolete, just like their business model. Why we continue to cling to and fight wars over this, is disturbing at least.
*editorial
What?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that there is no global warming. But I've noticed a growing tendency over the last few years, that any time you have bad weather events, that you get a lot of non-scientists raising the global warming alarm.
It reminds me of a documentary I was watching recently on Benjamin Franklin, and they were talking about the cultural environment of Boston during the late 1700's, and how if someone's house or business was struck by lighting, the Boston FD would put out neighboring houses and buildings, but not the original house or building, because it was deemed that God had chosen to punish the occupents by striking them with lightning.
People never seem to accept that bad weather, lightning strikes, and even severe hurricanes are just a normal part of the weather cycle (even if a hurricane this strong might only happens once or twice a century - in geological terms that would be pretty normal).
I think that Global Warming has become the new superstition of the 20th century. Looking for something to blame fires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, anything you want on? Global Warming!!!!!
The more fundamental issue is that the workers' homes are badly damaged. It's hard to get productivity out of someone whose home is a pile of rubble in three feet of water and is living in a shelter 200 miles away.
But then again, I could be wrong.
There's no looting after the Japanese have an earthquake, either. I wonder if it's possible for slashdot to discuss the cultural differences that lead to looting without everyone being modded to flamebait.
Sorry, that was a bit harsh. I should have said:
"But you don't listen. You don't require your building departments to hire qualified professionals to monitor contractors. You don't make them enforce inspection provisions in the code. You don't make them require complete plans for construction. How do you allow this? By requiring that the cost of construction be more important than the safety fo the building. You think you'll be happier in a 4000SF ticky-tacky box than a properly designed 1800SF gem. You let your legislators enact statues of repose (how long you can sue for defects) which are far less than the design life of the building (50 years, btw). So you put you and your families in harm way, intentionally, through inaction and the need to have a bigger, more extravagant home than you can afford to build properly. And even if you claim you know no better, and are ignorant of the law and common sense, you listen to news reports for a couple of days of a major hurricane coming, huge winds, terrible rain, storm surge far in excess of levys, and you sit in your freaking house and wait until its too late to go to higher ground. So you die.
Is that better?
I do have some sympathy for the victims. It's a horrible tragedy. Looks like it very well may be worse (no, certainly IS worse) than the damage inflicted by the suicide hijackers on 9-11-01. I have a family, too, and would be devastated if I lost any of them. And I'd be pissed at them, as well, if they sat in their house for two days watching a 175MPH hurricane slowly make its way towards them, and didn't do anything. Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Tornadoes...they all happen vary quickly. Hurricanes take a while to get to you. That's why I live on the east coast - of all the natrual disasters, hurricanes are fairly predictable. I'm okay with that predictability - I have time to decide whether to run for my life. If I choose not to...well, its my own damned fault if I goes toes up.
(guess I'm not really redeeming myself here. oh, well, its been a long day)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?